"largely based on the events of the Yangtze incident. Richard Todd starred as Kerans in the 1957 film ""Yangtse Incident: The Story of HMS Amethyst"" (in the US most commonly released as ""Battle Hell"", but also as ""Escape of the Amethyst"" and ""Their Greatest Glory""). For the film, ""Amethyst"" was brought out of storage to play herself. As her engines were no longer operational, her sister ship, , was used for shots of the ship moving. Amethyst Incident The ""Amethyst"" Incident, also known as the Yangtze Incident, was a historic event which involved the Royal Navy ship HMS ""Amethyst"" on"
"Amethyst Incident The ""Amethyst"" Incident, also known as the Yangtze Incident, was a historic event which involved the Royal Navy ship HMS ""Amethyst"" on the Yangtze River for three months during the Chinese Civil War in the summer of 1949. On 20 April 1949, HMS ""Amethyst"", commanded by Lieutenant Commander Bernard Skinner, was on her way from Shanghai to Nanking to replace , which was standing as guard ship for the British Embassy there during the Chinese Civil War between the nationalist Kuomintang led Republic of China and the Communist Party led People's Republic of China. According to the Royal"
"against the Japanese forces. The ship was on active duties as far as Australia and the Philippine Islands. At the end of hostilities in 1945 ""Black Swan"" followed the cruiser into Shanghai and were the first Royal Navy warships to liberate Japanese concentration camps containing British and Empire prisoners. In 1949 she took part in the Yangtze Incident when she, with others, went to aid of . ""Black Swan"" suffered 12 men wounded and severe damage to her superstructure in a fierce engagement with Chinese batteries and fell back. The failed relief effort cost 46 killed and 64 injured. ""Black"
"le Yangtse"" (French) and ""Vuur op de Yangtse"" (Flemish/Dutch), both meaning """"Fire on the Yangtse"""". The film was entered into the 1957 Cannes Film Festival. On 19 April 1949, the Royal Navy sloop HMS ""Amethyst"" sails up the Yangtze River on her way to Nanking, the Chinese capital, to deliver supplies to the British Embassy. Suddenly, without warning, People's Liberation Army (PLA) shore batteries open fire and after a heavy engagement, ""Amethyst"" lies grounded in the mud and badly damaged. attempts to tow ""Amethyst"" off the mud bank, but is herself hit several times and has to depart. A further"
"Yangtse Incident: The Story of H.M.S. Amethyst Yangtse Incident: The Story of H.M.S. Amethyst (1957) is a British war film that tells the story of the British sloop caught up in the Chinese Civil War and involved in the 1949 Yangtze Incident. It was based upon the book written by Lawrence Earl. The film was known in the US by the alternative titles Battle Hell, ""Escape of the Amethyst"", ""Their Greatest Glory"" and ""Yangtze Incident"". Non-English language titles include the direct German translation of ""Yangtse-Zwischenfall"", and ""Commando sur le Yang-Tse"" in France. In Belgium it was known as ""Feu sur"
"a march through the city. The next day ""Belfast"" took charge of a silver ship's bell, a gift of the people of Belfast. She sailed for Hong Kong on 23 October to join the Royal Navy's Far East Station, arriving in late December. By 1949, the political situation in China was precarious, with the Chinese Civil War moving towards its conclusion. As flagship of the 5th Cruiser Squadron, ""Belfast"" was the Far Eastern Station's headquarters ship during the April 1949 ""Amethyst"" Incident, in which a British sloop, , was trapped in the Yangtze River by the communist People's Liberation Army."
"and defected to the enemy. Not wanting the remaining five boats to be destroyed, the commander of the ROCN RDF Rear Admiral Ye Yuhe (叶裕和) led the remnant of the defected force to the enemy on November 30, 1949. PLAN renamed the boat to Yangtze, and the armament was subsequently changed to four 40 mm and four 20 mm guns. The gunboat remained in PLAN's service until 1982 when it finally retired. The importance of Yangtze in the history of PLAN is apparent when one considers that in February 1952, Mao Zedong was on board for four days and three"
"ship (USS ""Rocky Mount""), two light cruisers, four destroyers, twelve destroyer escorts, and many PT boats and minesweepers along with a British naval contingent of three light cruisers, six destroyers, six destroyer escorts, and some minesweepers. In November the new heavy cruiser joined the unit. When the Chinese Civil War finally reached the Yangtze Valley, in 1949, the U.S. Navy permanently ceased operations on the Yangtze River and officially disbanded the Yangtze Patrol. Yangtze Patrol The Yangtze Patrol, also known as the Yangtze River Patrol Force, Yangtze River Patrol, YangPat and ComYangPat was a prolonged naval operation from 1854–1949 to"
"state had wrongly invaded Chinese national waters and had fired upon the PLA first. Because the communists (and later the People's Republic of China) did not acknowledge any treaties between the previous Chinese government and the British, they insisted that it was illegal for ""Amethyst"" to cruise in the Yangtze river. On 30 July 1949 ""Amethyst"" slipped her chain and headed downriver in the dark, beginning a dash for freedom running the gauntlet of guns on both banks of the river. She followed the passenger ship ""Kiang Ling Liberation"" in the hope that the observers ashore would be confused and"
"Principal, had admitted her to Somerville, that had first drawn her to the Quakers. The Bryans were married in Chengdu after the Quaker custom and stayed with Margery Fry on their first return as a couple from China. As Chinese Secretary, he helped to resolve the Yangtse Incident of April 1949, when the British warship HMS ""Amethyst"" was caught off-guard on Yangtze River behind the rapidly advancing lines of the People's Liberation Army. While his assistant, Edward Youde, later to serve as Governor of Hong Kong, achieved popular recognition for cycling behind those lines to make contact with the ""Amethyst"","
"refitted for further service in early 1946 to allow her to serve in the postwar fleet. Following the refit she sailed for the far east in 1946 and served there for the next three years on the China Station. In the spring of 1949 the frigate became trapped by advancing Communist Chinese forces up the Yangtze River. ""London"" sailed up the river as a show of strength in an attempt to help free the frigate. The Communist forces were not intimidated and took the cruiser under fire. ""London"" returned fire with her 8-inch and 4-inch guns, firing several hundred rounds,"
"took place in the North Atlantic, south of Waterford and resulted in the loss of all 49 of the U-boat's crew. During the war the ""Amethyst"" was credited, along with the sloops , , , and frigate , with sinking the in the North Channel on 16 January 1945. The British Admiralty withdrew this credit in a post-war reassessment. On 20 April 1949, ""Amethyst"" was on her way from Shanghai to Nanking (now Nanjing) when she was fired upon by the People's Liberation Army, thus starting the Amethyst Incident. ""Amethyst"" was trapped in China until 30 July 1949 when she"
"HMS Concord (R63) HMS ""Concord"" was a destroyer of the Royal Navy. She was initially ordered as ""Corso"" during the Second World War, and was built by John I. Thornycroft & Company, Southampton. She was launched on 14 May 1945, renamed ""Concord"" in June 1946 and commissioned on 20 December 1946. ""Concord"" served in the Far East between 1947 and 1957 as part of the 8th Destroyer Squadron. In 1949, she was involved in the Amethyst Incident. ""Concord"" entered the River Yangtze and proceeded to a point off the Woosung Fort, the location of a heavy gun battery from the"
"was used during the making of the film ""Yangtse Incident"". She depicted both and . ""Doctor Who"" companion, Ben Jackson, was assigned to ""Teazer"", as shown on his uniform cap. Within the ""Whoniverse"", ""Teazer"" was still in service in 1966. In July that year, she had recently left England, bound for the West Indies, leaving Jackson seconded to a shore posting and very disappointed. HMS Teazer (R23) HMS ""Teazer"" was a T-class destroyer of the British Royal Navy that saw service during the Second World War. She was later converted to a Type 16 fast anti-submarine frigate, with the new"
"gunboat served with the ROCN until 30 November 1949, when the ROCN Riverine Flotilla commander defected to advancing communist force that blocked the Yangtze River, taking seven boats to the communist side, including Gannet/Ying San. After joining the PLAN, the gunboat was once again renamed Nu River. She served until being retired in 1975. HMS Gannet (1927) HMS ""Gannet"" was a river gunboat of Royal Navy built by Yarrow Shipbuilders in 1927 for Yangtze Patrol. HMS Gannet is the sister ship of . Originally functioning in area of Hong Kong, HMS Gannet was damaged by Japanese aircraft and went to"
"John Kerans Commander John Simon Kerans MP(30 June 1915 – 12 September 1985) was an officer in the Royal Navy and later a Conservative Party politician. He is also the author of the 1964 book ""The World's Greatest Sea Adventures"", Publisher: Odhams Books Ltd. As Assistant British Naval Attaché in then Nanking, China in 1949, Lieutenant-Commander Kerans took command of when the ship came under fire on the Yangtze River during the final stages of the Chinese Civil War after the captain and 16 others were killed in the shelling. The ship was detained for ten weeks during negotiations for"
"protest at the bombardment of a civil port, decried the unnecessary use of force to resolve the dispute, and claimed the attack was a premeditated act of violence. The matter was discussed in the British parliament, with Foreign Secretary Sir Austen Chamberlain declaring that the Royal Navy action was against engaged military targets. Wanhsien incident The Wanhsien incident of 1926 was a series of maritime conflicts on the river Yangtze, between British merchant shipping and regional Chinese military leaders, culminating in a battle with Royal Navy gunboats. In 1926, while China was in the midst of a civil war, Sichuan"
"Sydney. She was sold in 1947 and was renamed ""Pearl River"" in 1948 based at Shanghai. She was renamed ""Hong Shan"" in 1949 and ""Santos"" in 1950. ""Santos"" sank after hitting a mine in the Yangtze River on 19 June 1950, near Woosung (Wusong) in the People's Republic of China. HMAS Orara HMAS ""Orara"" (J130) was a 1,297-ton anti-submarine and depot ship of the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) during World War II. ""Orara"" was built in 1907 by Scott of Kinghorn, Kinghorn as a cargo passenger steam ship for the North Coast Steam Navigation Company. She plied the Clarence River"
"Yangtze against bands of warlord soldiers and outlaws. The warship engaged in continuous patrol operations between Ichang and Chungking throughout 1923, supplying armed guards to merchant ships, and protecting Americans at Chungking while that city was under siege by a warlord army. The British Royal Navy had a series of Insect-class gunboats which patrolled between Chungking and Shanghai. Cruisers and destroyers and Fly-class gunboats also patrolled. The most infamous incident was when ""Panay"" and in 1937, were dive-bombed by Japanese aeroplanes during the notorious Nanking Massacre. The Westerners were forced to leave the Yangtze River with the Japanese takeover in"
"1941. The former steamers were either sabotaged or pressed into Japanese or Chinese service. Probably the most curious incident involved in 1949 during the Chinese Civil War between Kuomintang and People's Liberation Army forces; and led to the award of the Dickin Medal to the ship's cat Simon. Tens of millions of people live in the floodplain of the Yangtze valley, an area that naturally floods every summer and is habitable only because it is protected by river dikes. The floods large enough to overflow the dikes have caused great distress to those who live and farm there. Floods of"
"THE YANGTZE INCIDENT HIS BEHAVIOUR WAS OF THE HIGHEST ORDER The following citation accompanied the ""Amethyst"" campaign ribbon: Simon is also commemorated with a bush planted in his honour in the Yangtze Incident Grove at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire. In 1950, the writer Paul Gallico dedicated his novel ""Jennie"" to Simon. Simon (cat) Simon (c. 1947 – 28 November 1949) was the ship's cat who served on the Royal Navy sloop HMS ""Amethyst"". In 1949, during the Yangtze Incident, he received the PDSA's Dickin Medal after surviving injuries from a cannon shell, raising morale, and killing off a"
"protect British interests, arriving at Hong Kong on 15 October. ""Wild Swan"" was based at Jiujiang on the Yangtze river from January to June 1927, and on 26 March ""Wild Swan"" and the river gunboat intercepted the British steamer ""Kiangwo"" which had been seized by Chinese Nationalist troops to ferry troops up the Yangtze. After negotiation, the Nationalists released the vessel, paying compensation to the ship's owners. The Flotilla re-assembled at Hong Kong on 1 May 1928 to prepare to return to home waters, but departure was delayed by the Jinan incident, a clash between Chinese Nationalist and Japanese troops,"
"all were scuttled as blockships in the Yangtze on 11 August 1937 during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Chinese cruiser Hai Yung Hai Yung () was a protected cruiser of the Chinese Navy. ""Hai Yung"" was one of a class of three ships built in Germany for the Chinese after the losses of the First Sino-Japanese War. The ship was a small protected cruiser with quick-firing guns, a departure from the prewar Chinese navy’s emphasis on heavy but slow-firing weapons for its cruisers. ""Hai Yung"" resembled the British protected cruisers of the and Italian , and may have been modeled on"
"American nationals. On many occasions the ship came under fire, as in October 1926 when she was caught between the rifle fire of opposing Chinese armies on the Yangtze. ""Isabel"" also took part in the Nanking Incident on 24 March 1927, when shelling and threats of force procured the release of a large group of American and British prisoners held by Chinese nationalists in Nanking. She patrolled the 1,700 nautical miles (3,148 kilometers) of this dangerous river until 1928, when enough purpose-built river gunboats had arrived to serve in the Yangtze Patrol that she was no longer needed on the"
"Monmouth Rebellion against James II of England. , ""Monmouth"" carries the most battle honours of any ship name currently serving in the Royal Navy. ""Monmouth"" visited Wellington in June 1995 in company with , the first UK or US warship to visit New Zealand since the 1985 ANZUS dispute. Another ""first"" followed in 1999 as ""Monmouth"" became the first major Royal Navy vessel to visit Dublin since the 1960s. In October 1997, ""Monmouth"", in company with and stood by off Pointe Noire in West Africa on Operation Kingfisher - in readiness for evacuation during the deteriorating political situation in the"
"Corfu Channel incident The Corfu Channel Incident consists of three separate events involving Royal Navy ships in the Channel of Corfu which took place in 1946, and it is considered an early episode of the Cold War. During the first incident, Royal Navy ships came under fire from Albanian fortifications. The second incident involved Royal Navy ships striking mines and the third incident occurred when the Royal Navy conducted mine-clearing operations in the Corfu Channel, but in Albanian territorial waters, and Albania complained about them to the United Nations. This series of incidents led to the ""Corfu Channel"" case, where"
"consul in Shanghai, Sir Walter Henry Medhurst took seventy Royal Marines in a man-of-war and steamed up the Yangtze to Nanjing in a controversial show of force that eventually resulted in an official apology from Viceroy Zeng Guofan and financial restitution made to the injured missionaries. From the time of the Taiping Rebellion (1853) to the end of the Communist revolution (1949) Yangzhou was in decline, due to war damage and neglect of the Grand Canal as railways replaced it in importance. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, it endured eight years of enemy occupation and was used by the Japanese"
"of the Yangtze River and the following argument by the British government that the seized planned to foment armed uprising in India provoked outrage from the American government, followed by a number of incidences including the SS ""Henry S"" incidence. The U. S. Atlantic Fleet dispatched destroyers to the Philippines. The relations were strained when in May 1916, the British government decided to relax its aggressive policy and seek cooperation with the US. The ""China"" prisoners were released that month, but relations did not improve before November that year, with a number of exchanges through the rest of 1916. The"
"were changed. ""Magpie’s"" crew returned to the UK in ""Sparrow"". In 1958 ""Magpie"" had her tour of duty at the Cape Station finally completed; she sailed back for the UK for paying off, and was broken up by Hughes Bolckow, Blyth, Northumberland on 12 July 1959. HMS ""Magpie"" stood in for the moving shots of in the film ""Yangtse Incident"" in 1957. HMS Magpie (U82) HMS ""Magpie"", pennant number U82, was a Royal Navy Modified sloop launched in 1943 and broken up in 1959. She was the seventh Royal Navy ship to bear the name. The ship was the only"
"Yangzhou was the lower river's principal port for much of the Qing Dynasty, directing Liangjiang's important salt monopoly and connecting the Yangtze with the Grand Canal to Beijing. (That connection also made it one of the ""Yellow"" River's principal ports between the floods of 1344 and the 1850s, during which time the Yellow River ran well south of Shandong and discharged into the ocean only a few hundred kilometres away from the mouth of the Yangtze.) By 1800, English cartographers such as Aaron Arrowsmith had adopted the French style of the name as Yang-tse or Yang-tse Kiang. The British diplomat"
". On January 14, 2015, ""Wellington"" intercepted three fishing vessels, the ""Songhua"" the ""Kunlun"" and the ""YongDing"", who were allegedly fishing illegally in Antarctic waters. The fishing vessels refused to be boarded and poor weather and sea conditions prevented "" Wellington"" from forcing the issue. ""Wellington"" was involved in seabed surveys off Kaikoura after the 2016 Kaikoura earthquake. The ship is named in honour of HMNZS ""Wellington"" (F69), a ""Leander"" class frigate serving in the Royal New Zealand Navy from 1982 until 1999. Both HMNZS ""Otago"" and HMNZS ""Wellington"" have recently gone through minor upgrades, including sensors and weapons, and"
"HMS Ladybird (1916) HMS ""Ladybird"" was an of the Royal Navy, launched in 1916. This class are also referred to as ""large China gunboats"". Originally built to patrol the River Danube during World War I, she sailed for China from Malta in February 1927 to serve on the Yangtze River. On 12 December 1937, ""Ladybird"", along with became involved in the ""Panay"" incident and came under fire from a Japanese artillery unit near Wuhu on the Yangtze River. ""Ladybird"" was hit by six shells and ""Bee"" dodged a shell as she came upon the scene, however ""Ladybird"" did not take"
"a pitiful ""miauu"" in the distance. ""We rowed as hard as we could and laughed and cried when we lifted the sopping wet furball aboard"". The cat became the ship's cat aboard the rescue ship, the British armed naval trawler , and was given the name Rinda after the previous ship. Simon was the ship's cat of HMS ""Amethyst"" during the Yangtze Incident in 1949, and was wounded in the bombardment of the ship which killed 25 of ""Amethyst""’s crew, including the commanding officer. He soon recovered and resumed killing rats and keeping up the crew's morale. He was appointed"